A RAFT OF FUN AHEAD.

Byline: Mike Stahlberg The Register-Guard

Like a kid on Christmas Eve with a rare promise of snowfall in the air, Brian Sykes couldn't hide his anticipation.

"This is going to be a great year for rafting!" said Sykes, president and general manager of Ouzel Outfitters, a Bend-based company that ranks among Oregon's oldest and largest river-running firms.

"This is the best year we've had in the past five years - and maybe the past decade," said Sykes, a veteran of 16 years in the rafting business.

Sykes and other river runners, private as well as commercial, owe their optimism to Oregon's unusually white winter.

From Mount Hood to Crater Lake, the snowpack in the Oregon Cascades "on average, is probably 200 percent of normal, as far as the amount of water it contains is concerned," said Andy Bryant, a hydrologist for the Northwest River Forecast Center in Portland.

For example, Timberline on Mount Hood had "almost 20 feet of snow" on the ground last week, Bryant said, and the snowpack might not have peaked yet. Snow levels typically max out sometime in April.

All that stored water points to "later and higher" flows than usual in the state's key recreational waterways, Bryant said. In other words, a banner year for boating is expected.

Sykes' company takes about 3,000 people a year on trips on six Oregon rivers - the Owyhee, John Day, Deschutes. Rogue, McKenzie and North Umpqua - and all six are expected to see well above-average flows this season, he said.

The favorable forecast is especially welcome in the wake of recent low water years that provided scant spring and early-summer boating opportunities, except in rivers whose flows are augmented by releases from flood-control reservoirs.

"Three of the last five years have been significantly below normal," Bryant said. In key east-side watersheds, "there was almost no snowpack to speak of and the flows kind of fizzled out by the end of April."

Sykes said "poor snowfall and early-season snow-melt shortened, or eliminated altogether, rafting seasons on rivers such as the John Day and Owyhee" in several recent years.

"This year, things are different."

In fact, based upon the Northwest River Center's 120-day flow projections, whitewater lovers can expect popular rivers in eastern Oregon to remain at "runnable" levels two to four weeks longer than normal this summer.

On the Grande Ronde River northwest of La Grande, for example, flows are projected to remain about 4,500 cubic feet per second through mid-July. Typically, they drop below that level by the third week of June.

The forecast for a prolonged spring runoff is especially welcome for the Owyhee River, which Sykes calls the "premier river" east of the Cascades and is referred to as "The Grand Canyon of Oregon" by many boaters.

"The Owyhee is the least-known Oregon river, but it is one of the best in the country," Sykes said. "It's a paradise for birders. It's got hot springs. It's got bighorn sheep. And those canyons are amazing."

The "word is out" among boaters "and its looking like it's going to be a busy season on the Owyhee," for private and commercial boaters, Sykes said. "Our Owyhee bookings are probably the best we've had in 10 years."

The John Day River "is also looking very good," he said. "Where we usually expect to run out of water in early June, we might be rafting into the first of July this year."

The snowpacks in central and southeast Oregon are "not as exceptional" as those in the Cascades and the Blue Mountains, Bryant said.

Instead of being double the normal water level, as in the Cascades, snowpacks in the Deschutes and Ochoco river basins were about 11/2 times average, according to Natural Resources Conservation Service reports.

Meanwhile, boating should be better this year on west-side rivers such as the Rogue, McKenzie and North Umpqua.

While those rivers are less sensitive to low snowpacks than their eastern Oregon counterparts, boaters will appreciate this year's strong flows.

"Overall, it should be a less rocky experience all summer long," Sykes said.

And, yes, there can be too much of a good thing when it comes to river flows, especially early in the season.

About the only thing that could darken the outlook for river rafting is a long period of unseasonably warm and wet weather, which could result in the snow melting more quickly than called for in the long-range forecast.

That could make some rivers too high.

Even a normal snowmelt regime could produce too much water for good boating in some rivers.

"We're actually looking at the North Umpqua now for some of our trips scheduled in late May," Sykes said. "Very possibly, we could be looking at water levels that we deem unsafe."

Flows of 2,500 cubic feet per second at the Copeland Creek gauge "would be high for us," he said.

Bryant encourages recreational users to check the River Forecast Center's seven-day forecasts, available on line at www.nwrfc.noaa.gov/.

"Anybody that is making plans to go out, I would say should monitor that short-term forecast," Bryant said.